One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. Joan of Arc

Tomoe Gozen

Tomoe Gozen was a 12th-century female samurai and a skilful warrior. She was reputed to be the concubine of the great warrior Minamoto no Yoshinaka and helped him to win the Genpei War (1180–1185), the great dynastic clash for the control of Japan fought between the Taira and Minamoto families.

During one battle she was reported to have defended a bridge against dozens of attackers single-handedly and in another story she killed warriors one after another and then killed their leader, decapitating him and presenting his head to Yoshinaka. When Yoshinaka was finally defeated he sent Tomoe away because he did not want to die in front of a woman.

What happened to her after that is disputed – some say she became a nun, others that she found Yoshinaka’s head after the battle and walked with it out to sea.

Jeanne d’Arc (1412-1431) was an illiterate peasant from Domrémy in north-east France who inspired a remarkable series of victories during the Hundred Years War. An old French prophecy said a young maid would save France; but Jeanne also possessed notable tactical nous, favouring pre-emptive attacks. Dressed as a man, with cropped hair and wearing white armour, she broke the five-month siege of Orléans in a week. Charles VII was crowned at Reims seven weeks later.

In early 1430, Jeanne fell into the hands of Burgundian troops. They sold her to the English for a ransom (worth £4.5 million today). The most serious charge against her was dressing as a man – an “abomination unto the Lord” (Deuteronomy 22:5) – this was all her French judge, the Bishop of Beauvais, needed and she was burned at the stake, aged 19. To prevent people building a shrine in her honour, her remains were dumped in the Seine.

In 1453, Charles VII expelled the English from almost all of France and ended the Hundred Years War. Soon afterwards, Pope Callixtus III ordered a retrial in which Joan of Arc was found “not guilty”. Sadly, it was too late to find her “not dead” as well.

Boudica

Boudica was the wife of Prasutagus, a client king in Roman Britain, whose people, the Iceni, lived in what is now Norfolk. On Prasagutus’s death in 61 AD the notional independence of the Iceni came to an end; there was a financial and political crisis. Cassius Dio says Roman financiers called in loans from British creditors; Tacitus says Boudica was flogged and her daughters raped. She raised a rebel army of 120,000 Celts which sacked Colchester, burned London to the ground and killed 70,000 citizens. She literally took no prisoners: according to Dio, women were impaled on spikes with their breasts removed and sewn on to their mouths.

When her army was ultimately defeated, Tacitus claims Boudica poisoned herself and her daughters rather than surrender; Dio says she just fell ill and died.

Her bones are supposed to be buried between platforms 9 and 10 of Kings Cross Station – more famous today as home to platform 9 ¾, the fictional platform from which trains to Hogwarts depart (although the film scenes were actually filmed between platforms 3 and 4 because 9 and 10 were not photogenic enough).

Red or dead: Alex Kingston takes a break from Dr Who to play Boudica

Queen Sammuramat

The semi-mythical Sammuramat (also known as Semiramis) was the wife of a ninth-century BC Assyrian officer named Menos. She helped her husband to win in battle, and was so talented a military strategist that she was requisitioned by King Ninus, leading to Menos’s suicide.

One legend tells how Queen Sammuramat persuaded her new husband to make her ruler of Assyria for the day; he did as she wished and in return she had him executed. Sammuramat ruled Assyria for the next 42 years and in that time built Babylon and its famous hanging gardens.

'Mad’ Anne Bailey

Liverpool-born Anne Bailey (1742-1825) came to prominence during the American Revolutionary War. She was a ranger but fought dressed as a man, went to militia meetings and briefed the men on strategy. Her nickname came about because she was fearless in battle. Some said she was insane; others that she had a magical power that helped her to move through Indian land without being seen (she saved the settlement at what is now Charleston, North Carolina, with a bold solo ride to obtain ammunition). Her motivation was probably the death of her husband during an encounter with the Shawnee tribe.